- She did her job, which is to enforce the laws as they are written.
- She is very good at doing that job.
- You will not get her fired on the basis of enforcing a law on the books where the law has not been found unconstitutional nor even had its constitutionality seriously questioned.
You want a petition that might have some value? Petition the white house to change the laws or to direct the DOJ not to enforce the law. Until either of those happens, federal prosecutors are ethically bound to continue prosecuting these cases.
None of this has any bearing on the pre-trial tactics that are being used with increasing abandon by the DOJ. Specifically, they seek to prevent defendants from having their day in court by making any defence ruinously expensive. An even nastier version of this tactic involves freezing a defendent's assets, making the retention of competent representation a fiscal impossibility. Having effectivly stripped a target of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair and open trial, they credibly threaten their victims with insanely onerous penalties that can be avoided only by accepting plea bargains that involve consent to charges that may well be baseless. In other words, they've successfully undermined one of the nation's key checks on abuse of government power.
From what's emerged today, it's clear that the case against Aaron was weak at best, and highly unlikely to lead to conviction in open court against capable defenders. "Bullying" is an understatement. What's going on is an outright assault on the very core of restrained government. Whether this power is being used for good or ill is besides the point. Like extrajudicial killings, the power itself has been placed outside prosecutor's reach for a reason. They have taken it anyway, and they've done so because no impedement has been there to stop them. At the same time, they've depended in security through obscurity. A general lack of awareness as to how abusive and out of control they've become has enabled the rot we're seeing now.
In this case, we see the importance of open access to jury trials in that they prevent the government from harming its own legitimacy. Given how unrestrained the DOJ has become, it was only a matter of time before they suffered a high-profile screwup. And while Ortiz may simply have been the one unlucky enough to own it, she is very much a part of the problem. Unlike Aaron, she is not an unfortunate innocent caught in the wrong time at the wrong place. To the contrary, she is the fox sneaking into the henhouse on the night that a new watchdog is sleeping beneath it.
I don't think this is really about it practically happening. (I mean I'd love for it to, but it's a pipe dream).
This is symbolic. It's our way of saying "fuck you" to the people responsible. The more people that sign this, the bigger the metaphorical middle finger.
Look, realistically, as concerned citizens there isn't a lot we can do here, but one thing we can do is publicly shame the people responsible for this and bring visibility to something that would otherwise go unacknowledged.
Her political ambitions, professional contact network, and post-DoJ employment prospects could be destroyed, costing her millions of dollars in income. Same for Heymann.
Knowing that hundreds of thousands of people in an industry they interface with would fuck them over given a chance must be a bit depressing.
- She did her job, which is to enforce the laws as they are written.
- She is very good at doing that job.
- You will not get her fired on the basis of enforcing a law on the books where the law has not been found unconstitutional nor even had its constitutionality seriously questioned.
You want a petition that might have some value? Petition the white house to change the laws or to direct the DOJ not to enforce the law. Until either of those happens, federal prosecutors are ethically bound to continue prosecuting these cases.